_12 February ‘09 Thursday A couple of days have gone by without getting to the journal, so I’ve got a little bit of catching up. Tuesday morning we awoke to a very windy and cloudy day. Fact is, while we were still lying in bed, it started to rain like hell. Thank God it only lasted about an hour, but the amount of rain that fell left enough water on the grassy areas to be one big sponge. This was not going to be a day for sightseeing so we went to the computer and checked for show times at one of the local theaters. Our choice turned out to be Slum Dog Millionaire. With all the positive reviews we’ve heard about this movie, we just had to see it. It was noon when we walked in and just after 2 when we found ourselves ready to head back out into the bad weather…not a thing we really wanted to do. Sooo… We went back in and took in a second movie. “He’s Just Not That Into You” was our choice for the second movie. This was a “girls flick” that I found to be just OK. It’s not that “girl’s flick’s” are not entertaining, it’s just that this one was just not going to rate high on my list. Wednesday turned out to be a great day with lots of sun and a noon time temperature in the mid 70’s. Maybe not a great day to go shopping at the mall but that was something that Louise wanted to do. Louise wanted to pick up a few new pieces of clothing but it just wasn’t going to happen. We’ll have to look again somewhere down the road. Today was another great day. We know we’ve got some crummy weather coming and it’s going to last past the weekend. For that reason I wanted to push forward to do some kayaking. Last week we drove out to the Gulf Island National Seashore Area and the Davis Bayou. The Davis Bayou was just too much to leave behind without putting into the waters so today was the day… By the time we entered the water, we found we had a light breeze coming off of the Gulf. That wasn’t going to bother us abit, as our plans were to stay in close and paddle the many little pathways through the reeds and trees. After filling the kayak with air, donning our jackets, and slipping into the water, we now had a chance to explore. It was an easy paddle as we followed one passageway after another. The large and small birds were everywhere. At one point we saw a huge Osprey nest that was still under construction and the Osprey . As we were rounding a corner through the maze of reeds, Louise almost came out of the kayak. A HUGE Gator jumped out of the reeds and dove under water 15 yards in front of us. I only saw and heard the splash of the water but Louise saw “THE GIANT” in action. We’ve seen a few alligators since we’ve been here in the south,

_but this one was by far the largest. We were in pretty shallow waters at the time so I really didn’t want to go any further into the path the gator had taken, so we slowly made a turn-around and paddled back out. I don’t think we would have been in any danger but I didn’t want to push it. We had a lot of different areas to explore and explore we did. Another smaller alligator come out of the reeds in front of us but much before we were close enough to get a good look but we were happy enough with that.